Ever since Anne Case and Angus Deaton published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last November there has been a spate of commentary over their major finding: mortality rates among middle-aged whites in the U.S. are rising while everyone else’s are improving.

The Commonwealth Fund has just published an “issue brief” on the topic, and we’ve got the authors — senior researcher David Squires and Fund president David Blumenthal — to talk things over with us.

Commonwealth Fund issue brief (free)

PNAS study (free)